Publications by authors named "Maria Giuseppina Prete"

Article Synopsis
  • Recent advances have led to new treatment options for metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), particularly for patients who have undergone extensive prior therapies.
  • Fruquintinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, has shown good effectiveness and safety in clinical trials (FRESCO and FRESCO 2) for heavily pretreated mCRC patients.
  • The review suggests creating a treatment algorithm to incorporate fruquintinib as a standard alongside other effective therapies for different patient profiles.
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The therapeutic landscape in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) has undergone a significant paradigm shift in recent years with the rising adoption of total neoadjuvant treatment (TNT). This comprehensive approach entails administering chemotherapy and radiation therapy before surgery, followed by optional adjuvant chemotherapy. To establish and deliver the optimal tailored treatment regimen to the patient, it is crucial to foster collaboration among a multidisciplinary team comprising healthcare professionals from various specialties, including medical oncology, radiation oncology, surgical oncology, radiology, and pathology.

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Current guidelines recommend pre-therapeutic genotyping to guide irinotecan dosing, but the usefulness of this approach remains to be clarified. In 247 patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancers undergoing irinotecan-based chemotherapy, we prospectively performed genotyping and we analyzed the incidence of severe neutropenia according to genotype-guided dose reductions. Overall, 28 (11.

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Risk factors for hepatic immune-related adverse events (HIRAEs) in patients with advanced/unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are unclear. We investigated: (i) clinical and morpho-pathological predictors of HIRAEs in 27 pretreatment tumor specimens, including surrogate biomarkers of the HCC immune class (based on intratumoral tertiary lymphoid structures, and glutamine synthase, CD3, and CD79 expression); and (ii) the relationship between HIRAE onset and subsequent treatment outcomes. Fifty-eight patients were included-20 (34%) received ICIs alone, and 38 (66%) received ICIs plus targeted agents as first- or further-line treatment.

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Substantial improvements have characterized the systemic treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) over the past 20 years. Besides strong evidence that supports the use of RAS and BRAF status as prognostic and predictive indicators of disease and response, novel technologies have made possible the incorporation of emerging biomarkers for the management of mCRC. On one hand, the discovery of point mutations, amplifications, fusions, and gene expression profiles highlights the genomic and dynamic complexity of CRC.

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Purpose Of Review: The therapeutic landscape of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has become notably complex in recent years. With this review, we aimed to put the most recent findings in perspective and tried to delineate the rapidly changing treatment algorithm.

Recent Findings: The combination of atezolizumab and bevacizumab has become the new first-line standard of care treatment for unresectable HCC after the positive results of the phase 3 IMbrave150 study.

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The systemic treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has significantly changed over the last years, with the introduction of two new standard-of-care first-line treatments (lenvatinib and the combination of atezolizumab and bevacizumab) and the success of several new agents in second line. In particular, after the approval of regorafenib, ramucirumab and cabozantinib, the landscape of second-line treatment has become notably complex, providing a serious challenge in clinical practice. In this review, we focus on cabozantinib, a multikinase inhibitor which was proven effective in improving overall and progression-free survival of patients previously treated with sorafenib in the randomized Phase III CELESTIAL trial.

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Article Synopsis
  • Biliary tract cancers (BTCs) include various aggressive tumors from the biliary system, often diagnosed late with poor outcomes, resulting in most patients living only 6 to 18 months post-diagnosis.
  • Recent studies have identified key mutations in BTCs that could be targeted with specific treatments, leading to hopeful developments in "precision medicine" approaches.
  • There’s ongoing research into combining immune checkpoint inhibitors with chemotherapy to improve treatment options for advanced BTCs beyond the current standard therapies.
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Biliary tract cancers (BTCs) are a group of rare and aggressive malignancies that arise in the biliary tree within and outside the liver. Beyond surgical resection, which is beneficial for only a small proportion of patients, current strategies for treating patients with BTCs include chemotherapy, as a single agent or combination regimens, in the adjuvant and palliative setting. Increased characterisation of the molecular landscape of these tumours has facilitated the identification of molecular vulnerabilities, such as IDH mutations and FGFR fusions, that can be exploited for the treatment of BTC patients.

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Cancer organoids are 3D phenotypic cultures that can be established from resected or biopsy tumour samples and can be grown as mini tumours in the dish. Flourishing evidence supports the feasibility of patient derived organoids (PDO) from a number of solid tumours. Evidence for cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) PDO is still sparse but growing.

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Objectives: To evaluate the role of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) as a local ablative treatment (LAT) in oligometastatic pancreatic cancer.

Methods: Patients affected by histologically confirmed stage IV pancreatic adenocarcinoma were included in this analysis. Endpoints are local control (LC), progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS).

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